Heil Honey I'm Home! is a British sitcom, written by Geoff Atkinson and produced in 1990, which was cancelled after one episode. It centres on fictionalised versions of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun, who live next door to a Jewish couple, Arny and Rosa Goldenstein.[3] The show spoofs elements of mid-20th century American sitcoms and is driven by Hitler's inability to get along with his neighbours. It caused controversy when broadcast and has been called "perhaps the world's most tasteless situation comedy".[4]

Contents

The first episode opens with a caption card explaining Heil Honey's fictional back-story: it supposedly comprises the rediscovered "lost tapes" of an abandoned, never-aired American sitcom created by "Brandon Thalburg Jnr".

In 1937, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun live in Berlin, next door to a Jewish couple, Arny and Rosa Goldenstein.[1] Hitler and Braun have little in common with their historical counterparts, acting more like a stock sitcom husband and wife. Hitler, for example, appears in a golfing sweater and cravat as well as military garb.[5] The Goldensteins are similarly hackneyed characters. The show is a spoof—not of the Third Reich, but of the sort of sitcoms produced in the United States between the 1950s and 1970s "that would embrace any idea, no matter how stupid".[1] In this spirit the title, plot and dialogue are deliberately vapid and corny and characters are applauded whenever they arrive on set.[1] Patterned after I Love Lucy, the actors have New York accents.[3]

The plot of the first episode centres on the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain coming to the Hitler house. Not wanting the Goldensteins to interrupt the visit, Hitler instructs Braun to keep the news from Rosa, which she fails to do. Rosa duly invites herself over with hopes of matching Chamberlain with her dull niece Ruth. Hitler gets the Goldensteins drunk in an attempt to make them leave before Chamberlain arrives, but they stay. Arny and Eva end up leading the visiting Prime Minister in a conga line around the living room while Hitler hides the "peace for our time" agreement in the icebox.

Only the pilot was ever screened, although eleven episodes were planned and a number were recorded[1] in which a story arc involved the Hitler's secretive attempts to kill the Goldensteins without the Goldensteins knowing.[6]

The programme proved controversial, with Hayim Pinner, secretary general of the Board of Deputies of British Jews describing the pilot as "in very bad taste", adding that: "We are against any trivialisation of the Second World War, Hitler or the Holocaust, and this certainly trivialises those things. It's very distasteful and even offensive".[3]

The television historian Marian Calabro described it as "perhaps the world's most tasteless situation comedy".[4] It was accused of crassly trivialising Nazism, although some have defended it as being in the same tradition of Third Reich parodies such as 'Allo 'Allo! and Hogan's Heroes, or along similar lines to the portrayal of Hitler as a domestic fool in The Producers. Some also point out the crassness was intentional, and part of the parody anyway. For instance, David Hawkes (professor of English) cites Heil Honey, I'm Home! as a "heavy-handed concept", and argues that the show was a failure as a comedy because it "disastrously exceeded" the limits of irony.[10]

Only the pilot was ever screened,[9] although eight episodes were planned and a number were recorded in which a story arc was about Adolf and Eva's attempt to kill the Goldensteins without the Goldensteins knowing it is Adolf and Eva. A video from GarethMarks.com, "Comedy Showreel" contains clips from pilot and unshown episodes.[6][11][12][8]Arthur Mathews has said that the production company sent him a copy of the entire series.[13] The filming of the series was cancelled immediately by Sky (BSkyB) on its acquisition of British Satellite Broadcasting. The show is one of the most controversial programmes ever to have been screened in the UK; it was listed at #61 on Channel 4's 100 Greatest TV Moments from Hell.[14][15]

Geoff Atkinson maintains that the aim of the show was not to shock, but to examine the appeasement surrounding Hitler in 1938. He concedes that the satire of this appeasement did not translate as well as he intended. Discussing the furore around the show, Atkinson has also stated that three quarters of the cast were Jewish and did not consider the concept controversial.[12]